Q: Reading Native American myths and legends might seem to require a new way of reading. What aesthetic assumptions (about what literature should be, about authorship, about plot, about form, etc.) do you typically bring to texts you read in English classes? And in what ways were those assumptions challenged?
A: This is not the first time that I have had to consider how my own habits of interpretation, which are normally unconscious, impact my reading of a text. My classes have made me aware of my own world view and assumptions about texts that impact my interpretation of them. However, in reading the narratives in American Indian Myths and Legends from Erdoes and Ortiz my normal methods of interpretation are falling short. The root cause is an unrectifiable cultural disconnect between my own very westernized perspective of texts and that of the Native American view presented in the volume.
The most troublesome assumption of mine in reading these stories is that they are based on different cultural ideas and serve goals for the society that I am unfamiliar with. For example, I might expect a moral tale that uses characters to present a particular social virtue. Yet in stories rely on a completely different set of narrative goals like the Powerful Boy we see a boy going around killing various apparently very powerful characters against his father’s will but to favorable ends. Perhaps the moral is service to one’s parents but more likely this story serves some other kind of goal.
Another challenged assumption is the author. Often we consider the meaning of the story based on the events in the author’s life or his or her individual perspective on life. However, here we are getting authorless stories that do not even acknowledge the teller for the most part except stories such as “How the Souix Came to Be” were even then the teller just mentions himself at the end as speaking. The author has been replaced by the tribe of origin. For many of the stories the tribe to which the story belongs has important meaning for the story as in the above mentioned and “When Grizzlies Walked Upright” most prominently.
Even in stories that do not pertain directly to the people of the tribe the culture of each specific tribe remains a frame of interpretation as it impacts the food and rituals included in the stories. For example, one story might mention buffalo while another uses corn and still a third uses both. That said, I think that better familiarity with the different tribe names and their respective locations would be helpful for interpretation. Finally, I want to make note of the conception of an ancient myth. My assumption would be that they have not been changed but in the case of these stories they have clearly been adjusted to fit the needs of the tribe. This change is especially notable in the explanations of the origins of white people versus the Native Americans within the stories.
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